THE DATING GAME

Being single in itself isn’t so bad, often it’s a fabulous affair, but when you are sick and tired of being alone and decide to get out there and look for somebody with whom to share takeout bills and pregnancy scares. The process for finding a suitable candidate, along with all the rules, regulations and expectations, quickly makes us think that the concept of ‘dating’ was invented by some heinous school teacher. Within the dos and don’ts, the when to call and the how many dates before we rip clothes off - dating, in all its spender, has become an art! How exactly do we win the game? Or for that matter learn how to play it?

Of all the phases of courtship, dating is undoubtedly the most complex, variable and failure-prone. Dating is one of two things; "Either it's about trying to get to the next level or it's about trying to get laid" says model Janice Dickinson, author of Check, Please! Dating, Mating and Extricating. It is bounded on the front end by the ‘pickup’ and bounded at the back end with the horizontal hanky panky.
Unlike its complicated meaty between, the beginning and the end are easy as long as you got the basic moves down – which shouldn’t be too hard, for these behaviours are half instinctive and don’t show a lot of variability, comparatively speaking. Men and women have been picking up and bedding each other since the Bronze Age – but dating, it’s been through numerous dizzying changes, brought on by the second order effects of changes like the automobile and the (want sex not babies) contraceptive pill.

Perhaps it’s not so surprising that leading-edge cultures seem to be showing a tendency to seriously compress the dating phase, shifting a lot of the getting-to- know-you stuff into either pre-pickup social interaction or the early stages of the sexual relationship. Classic first dates are declining and the blind date, long a staple of comedy routines, seems to be on its way out.

Within the same trend, labelling relationships has become oh-so-passé. Dating is no longer black and white formality; it is convoluted with different relational phases which, even to us, remain constantly elusive. We are left to play the waiting game until somebody takes pity and throws us a definition bone or we are forced to ask the “where’s this going?” question. While sometimes it may take no more than a few days (even hours) for your potential Mr/Mrs Right to declare that they want to date/marry/take you home to meet the parents. Other times, it takes an eternity just to get them to utter the "L" word, let alone pluck up the courage to accept the validity that you are in fact a couple after years of dating. Even worse, is the ‘can we be or are we more than friends?’ debate, one of the most irksome battles of singleton.

But are we giving up to soon on dating altogether - happier to dream than be disappointed? Already many of us have thrown in the towl to embrace a seeminly loveless existance, at least until things pick up or somebody resuces us from our self inflicted deprivation. Ok yes, sometimes you do have to kiss a lot of toads to find one that turns into something worth dating. But that doesn’t mean we should throw our hands up in defeat or bury our heads in a tub of ice-cream, moaning pitifully. As they say, if first you don’t succeed try try again! Or better yet, go bi, you’ll double your chances!